Ministry of Finance Statement in Response to EU Blacklisting of Countries

It has come to the attention of the Ministry of Finance, Government of Grenada, that Grenada has been one of 17 countries to be blacklisted by the EU Code of Conduct Group (Business Taxation).

On 5 December 2017, the council approved and published conclusions containing an EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions in taxation matters.

The reason put forward for Grenada being included on the list is as follows:

‘Grenada has not signed and ratified the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance as amended and did not clearly commit to addressing these issues by 31 December 2018. Grenada’s commitment to comply with criteria 1.1, 2.1 and 3 will be monitored.’

It is important to note that Grenada made high level commitments, complete with timelines, to the EU Code of Conduct group by way of letters on 17 and 28 November 2017, to action concerns raised by the group regarding meeting all the criteria set up by the EU Council for Transparency and fairness in taxation. And we are well on track to doing so.

Grenada has enacted and signed into force both the primary and secondary legislation which are required for implementing the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance (the MAC). In addition, Grenada has expended a significant amount of resources to put in place structures and processes to facilitate exchange of information on taxation with countries in the European Union.

Inadvertently, Grenada did not provide a timeline for signing the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance — given that a timeline was not in the Code of Conduct request. It must be noted though, that Grenada fully stated its commitment to sign in aforementioned correspondences.

Now that the blacklisting for that reason has been brought to our attention, the Minister of Finance has written to the code of conduct group, specifying our commitment to sign the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance by 31 December 2018.

Further in this regard, the Minister of Finance has requested that Grenada be de-listed soonest considering that we adequately and formally indicated our commitment to comply with all the stipulations of the code of conduct group going forward, and therefore should not have been included on the published blacklist.